This page describes current issues in Quick Find that may affect your user experience.
Questions?
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Wildcards—Limit on Use
Limited Use of Wildcards
Quick Find has a maximum of four wildcards ( * ) in a search statement. Using more than four results in the message No records found, with no indication that the lack of results is due to too many wildcards.
A wildcard is used in a search term to indicate any number of characters. For example, industr* retrieves industry, industries, industrial, etc.
Quick Find also lets you use a question mark in a search term to stand for a single character, e.g., wom?n retrieving both woman and women. Using more than eight ?'s in a search statement results in No records found, with no indication that this was caused by using too many ?'s.
Different Editions Grouped Together—Whether or Not They Match the Search Criteria
All the various editions of a book are always grouped together, even when only one matches the search criteria.
When you look up a book in Quick Find, all editions of the book are grouped together as one item in a result list, which can then be expanded to show all editions. Usually this is a convenience, and prevents result lists from being cluttered up with many editions of the same work.
In some cases the search criteria match only one book (or fewer than the total number) among those that are grouped together, and it might be necessary to open the items in the list one by one to find the desired one.
For example, if you want Shakespeare's King Lear in the Arden Shakespeare series, you might use the search statement "king lear" AND "arden shakespeare". The result list from this search includes the following entry:
Clicking on this entry opens a list of all 26 versions. You have to open each one to see if it is the Arden Shakespeare version.